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Cross-cultural Perception of Musical Similarity Within and Between India and Japan
Hideo Daikoku1, Taiki Shimozono2, Shinya Fujii3
1Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Japan.
Abstract:
Cross-cultural perception of musical similarity is important for understanding musical diversity and universality. In this study we analyzed cross-cultural music similarity ratings on a global song sample from 110 participants (62 previously published from Japan, 48 newly collected from musicians and non-musicians from north and south India). Our pre-registered hypothesis that average Indian and Japanese ratings would be correlated was strongly supported (r = .80, p <.001). Exploratory analyses showed that ratings from experts in Hindustani music from the north and Carnatic music from the south showed the lowest correlations (r= .25). These analyses suggest that the correlations we found are likely due more to shared musical exposure than to innate universals of music perception.
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